In 2004 my employer provided me with a really good laptop and didn’t mind me using it at home. No need for a 2nd computer. Until a 17 year old Swedish exchange student moved into my life, my home. My official role was “Host Mother”. I didn’t think I’d be chosen when I offered my skills to the local Scandinavian society:

I drink, I smoke, I work long hours, live alone with 2 cats and have absolutely no experience of being a parent or living with teenage kids except with my brother but that was over 20 years ago so it doesn’t really count. If she and her mother are OK with that then I guess we can work something out

Much to my surprise, and slight horror, they choose me – for a year. At work my Canadian manager told me I was crazy. Unconvincingly, I tried to reassure him:

You’re crazy, I left Scandinavia to get away from the bossy women and you’re inviting one home!

When a 17 year old moves into your home, is studying at Redmond High School (almost everyone’s parents work at Microsoft), you have to make sure they’re equipped with a computer. I bought a HP Compaq and set-up a home wireless for her. She would be able to do schoolwork with privacy in her room, or join me on mine downstairs. There were times when we sat next to each other on the Sofa using MSN Messenger to talk to each other. It was surreal and fun. When she left, she left the laptop.

Quickly I got used to personalising the machine and not carrying my work laptop home. I started blogging and met other people who had their own laptops and blogged. I was hooked. Sparkle makes me smile, helps me to sparkle.

When I got to work I found the door kicked-in and half a dozen laptops stolen. Booo!

The desktop computer I was planning to use wasn’t stolen. Phew!

When I turned it on this frustrating black message showed-up. Disbelievingly I rebooted the computer 3 x. Just incase. It didn’t make any difference. Poo!

Our IT department had a super-hero taking-out the hard drive and getting my stuff on a working (Apple) hard drive, in less than 30 minutes. Though I suspect that actually having an external boot disc for the computer would have been much quicker. But who uses external boot CD’s these days?!

After such a dramatic ‘where’s my computer gone’ day at work I was relieved to be home. The Cupboard had other ideas. She was considering a sympathy suicide. She leapt to the floor. Bollocks. She may have shown me a blue screen of death, but all I can remember was this monochrome thing when I attempted a reboot to fix it. She’s defintiely passed away.

Dad has always claimed that I have special powers over electrical equipment. He’s an electrician, he knows these things. He says I can break electrical goods by merely looking at them. I was never allowed to go near electrical equipment as a child. At least it was for a good reason, not like – ‘you can’t do that you’re a girl’. My life experience suggests that dad was onto something.

The wendy house business support team, including Sampo the fat cat, are on stand-by. We’re excited by the thought of earning money from Matthew’s javascript code hosting suggeston

Unfortunately, Matthew seems to think there is no cost for us hosting his code. After chatting with the crew here, we’ve given him some insight into our current business charges. We’re not cheap, but we’re worth it. If this flow of interest from marketters continues the wendy house might have to go so public or become Limited!

Just incase you thought eveything in the Cupboard was running smoothly, here is error of the day – the dialog text just never arrived, I waited about 5 minutes and the dialog eventually just disappeared of it’s own accord. It’s as-if the performance enhancement software just couldn’t be bothered to enhance performance…. ….a software equivalent of “whatever”

target being a monopoly. For example they undermine multiple hadware manufacturers. By contrast, companies such as Microsoft promote partnerships with other companies that sell Hardware (e.g. Dell, HP, Nokia, HTC etc). This approach enables those companies to thrive rather than competing with them. This strategy cost’s Microsoft in terms of time – the liaison and planning required and the lack of control leading to lack of consistency that introduces more potential for ‘errors’

Captured by BBC evil alliance

Unfortunately, when I started wanting to use BBC’s iplayer the only way to view the programs that my Licence had helped fund was to use Apple’s quicktime. Furious that the BBC chose to align with a company’s product rather than an industry standard. Darn, effectively the BBC was saying download Apple’s quick time or eff off.

For a while I managed without the BBC iplayer and just fumed until the lure of quality drama on-demand got the better of me. I installed Quicktime and lost a little of my self-esteem in the process.

Pompositively indignant

When I buy or use Microsoft services, part of their profit goes to causes I support. Microsoft products may not be beautiful to look at and they may be error ridden but they genuinely show social values that I respect. They can have my money and time before Apple anyday because of how they spend my commitment

Just incase you thought eveything in the Cupboard was running smoothly, here is error of the day “Failure to display security and shutdown options”. This is how the story unfolded

Zap the unresponsive browser

I was getting impatient waiting for Firefox to decide to ‘respond’. Respond sounds like something a patient does to treatment. It’s probably an appropriate analogy for a wendy treating a computer. It feels like dealing with the dead when you’ve got an unresponsive program. I pressed CTRL+ALT+DELETE:

Control the computer – kick Firefox

find an Alternative way to do what I want to do

Delete the unresponsive program which the ‘task manager’ seems to call a ‘task’, loosing the medical analogy and shifting to what looks like Taylorism

I just wanted to stop Firefox and use another browser, not a computer based task and workflow analysis.

Wait for the darkness

There is always a ‘black flash’ before Windows 7 shows me it’s fancy blue screen with a list of ‘security’ options. The black flash is similar to the one I get before it shows me a dialog asking me to give some program permission to do something like install updates. Blackness arrived, but it wasn’t a flash. Layered over the top of the blackness was and XP Classic (i.e. Win2K) style error message which accurately recognised that I had just pressed CTRL+ALT+DELETE.

The well-known troubleshooting strategy of switch everything off then turn it on again – and go off to make myself a cup of tea and ponder the meaning of life?

Being of an impatient disposition, when it comes to computers, I clicked OK which removed the black screen and returned me to the computer desktop and unresponsive Firefox. But what now? Should I now press ESC? Pah, I want the task manager, so I tried CTRL+ALT+DELETE again, and “Hey Presto!” this time I got the black flash followed by the Security and Shutdown options

I wonder whether the task manager is a security or a shutdown option? Certianly I use it to shut things down, so it’s probably a shutdown option….

McAfee thinks that I need a shortcut on my desktop for quick access to it’s internet security software.

I disagree because I:

can easily find McAfee with one-click from the desktop from a system tray icon- the desktop shortcut is redundant

NEVER need one-click quick access to McAfee – when it isn’t already open

keep a clean desktop – it has no shortcuts or documents on it. I find this aesthetically pleasing and it doesn’t interfere with what I’m actually doing

But McAfee is not content to simply disagree with me, it proactively bullies me! – everytime I delete the desktop shortcut – it REPLACES it!!!!! This is worse than merely ignoring my request – this is reversing my request, ignoring me with knobs on!

Luckily, I’m prepared to spend time playing around in software settings, so I set off to find the “Don’t automatically place a shortcut cut on the desktop” setting in the main program. Guess what? There isn’t one!!!!!! It take a lot longer to find out that something doesn’t exist, then to find that it does, because it requires a complete, exhaustive, search. That makes me 700 exclaimation marks ANGRY!!!!!!!

Maybe I can suggest to McAfee that they change this poor user experience, or maybe they can tell me how to remove the pesky, unnecessary, irritating, shortcut. A trip to the McAfee website might help. What do you think?

I had to install “Citrix Gotoassist” before I could chat to my “representative”. If this software is an integral part of the McAfee service then it should be pre-installed with the application and available from within the application. This would reduce the number of technical hoops that the wendy has to jump through when she needs support. It would also reduce the time taken to get first-time support.

My representative told me that the design team are working on an improvement that will be included in the next automatic update. Excellent.

If McAfee had employed user experience experts to review their software they would never have made such a basic software design error in the first place.

My security software should be inobtrusive, it should be there and accessible. It should not be bullying me and requiring me to install extra components before answering my support questions. Generally a very poor show by McAfee

The year started well as I rolled out of bed in my warm brushed cotton, red tartan, pyjamma set. Mumsy buys the best christmas pressies with her Marks and Spencers loyalty card. As the teapot brewed I lifted the cupboard‘s lid and logged in.

The warm, fluffy feeling started fading as Microsoft’s .NET framework announced an ‘unhandled exception‘ in MY ‘application‘. My cheeky little application had the afrontary to so something without proper handling? Naughty!’

This verbose .NET Framework message appeared to offer me 2 choices in the first paragraph:

ignore this error (continue button)

force my application to close (quit button)

The second paragraph is written in jargon about turning on functions, configuring, clients, trace-logs and SDKs. This is 2012, good practice for producing software error messages has been around for decades. Why is Microsoft still showing me outrageously poorly designed dialogs? Especially first thing in the morning of the new year. pfft. I choose to ignore this message because it didn’t enable me to make an informed decision – which ‘application’ of mine is exceptional?

A few moments later I got a BIG clue about the exceptional ‘application’. Mozilla:

raised it’s hand with a message

started its conversation with me by apologising. Nice! This takes ownership for having caused the problem and sets the tone of the conversation with me as one of respect to me

tells me firefox will try to fix the problem – doesn’t expect me to fix it

politely asks for me to give them diagnostic information. Which I did

I really like the tone of voice, the attitude, of Mozilla when talking to me

As I poured my second mug of tea another potential culprit for the ‘application’ that Microsoft .NET framework found ‘exceptional’ raised it’s hand

The large, ugly, Sony Viao update dialog insisted that I update my netbook software then told me I had to reboot the cupboard. It’s direct instructional approach feels rather rude. I follow the instructions because I’ve been trained by years of poor software to feel helpless and follow this type of condescending instruction

I used to have Microsoft Office 2003 installed on Neverland. I haven’t yet bothered putting it in the cupboard because I don’t have the patience to wait for 7 years worth of updates to install. Many of my files are word files, (.doc). When I tried to open them in the Microsoft Works Word processor it didn’t recognise their format, neither did wordpad.

I have no idea what the worldwide statistics are for the actual use of different browsers. I do know what browsers are used by the people (IP addresses) who open Wendy House pages because Google Analytics has snooped on them and told me! (see below)

Unsurprisingly IE in all its versions is the most common browser. Obviously. Almost half these visits are made by me in the cupboard. If we remove the numbber of visits made by myself we are left with Firefox being the browser of choice for my visitors. ‘Choice’ because someone choose to install it on the computer and open it to visit the wendy house.

I understand that some people have more than one browser on their computer. For a gal like me this is potentially confusing. Where possible I like to keep things simple; one credit card, one set of parents, one kitchen, one bathroom, one type of tea bag, one car. This simplicity reduces the everyday cognitive load of decision making. I’ve removed the need to make many daily decisions. Obviously there are some details that are significant and require reqgular decision making resources such as – which cheese? which hat? Which password?

Currently I’m toying with ‘which browser’. I am not an ‘early adopter’ of new technologies. I like to use things which lots of other people have used and found OK. Firefox is looking like the browser for me because it’s open-source, should play well with Thunderbird and lots of people that read the wendy house use it already, pressumably because it works well for them.

Oh! Looks like Mozilla Thunderbird is having a sulk. She’s ignoring me and legitimising the offense by using psuedo-medical jargon – ‘not responding’ to treatment by wendy. Less than 24hrs after putting her in the cupboard. TUSH!

After reading this message I went in search of a way to ‘closethe exsiting Thunderbird process’ . I’m not used to closing a process and a quick look in the Windows 7 starter task manager confirmed my suspicion that this was pretty scary. Instead, I decided on the more familiar, easier, way to close something. I closed the only program I knew that I was using at the same time. I closed IE8. Then tried to start Thunderbird. That worked. That sorted the problem.

Close IE to fix Thunderbird. Confusing. Two programs that just aren’t playing nicely together, squabbling and leaving me to be doctor and arbitrater. Sigh.

Under ‘adjust your computers settings I clicked on ‘uninstall program’

I chose Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 from the list

I clicked uninstall program

But windows doesn’t want to accept this action without further confirmation, I might not mean it, this might be an accident, do I REALLY want to uninstall this program?

I clicked on the ‘yes’ button with extra force to demonstrate my certainty.

YES

Large and bold, that’s how I felt. That’s what I wanted the button to say. This was no accidental uninstall.

I wonder how often people do accidentally select something to uninstall, click ‘No’ on this dialog. If it is a genuine problem then fixing should happen before this point, improve the users ability to select the program initially, more information with larger clickable target rather than questioning the users ability to be ‘sure’.

This reminded me of the XP shut down process where you have to choose shutdown at least 2 times before it will actually do what you’ve asked, and only then if some programs haven’t objected to your wishes. Luckily Windows 7 Starter simply shuts down when I ask

No cascading menus. finding stuff in my ‘Start’ menu is easy as ‘search’ none of those fiddly cascading menus. HoooooooooRAH

Network and sharing centre. this is lovely, it arrived in Windows Vista and has a network connection troubleshooting tool. While I use it rarely it does a great job worth doing

Task based control panels. In the control panel the controls are grouped, sensible groups, easy to navigate by tasks and no option to view them in ‘classic’ (XP or Windows 2000) list format. I like this. It’s relatively easy to find out if a control exists or not

No Windows Movie Maker. There is no windows moviemaker onWindows 7 starter. This is an application I rarely used, but it would have been nice to be able to edit the media-clips that my digital camera produces. Ho hum. If a cheaper version has less features this is one that I would vote for excluding

No mail client. XP included Outlook Express which I used to use so that I could manage all my email while offline, store it on my laptop. Windows 7 expects you to be online, using the cloud all the time. They provide a complimentary free trial of Office 2007 but it doesn’t include the Office mail client – Outlook. I enjoyed the benefits of having a local store of my mail from multiple email accounts. Now I have to go online or purchase a mail client. Sigh.

Sync centre. There is a sync centre with a control for setting-up offline file sync, but nothing happens when I click on it, not even any feedback that says I can’t do this or what I need to do to set it up. I used to use this in XP Professional on Darling

Personalisation. I can’t change the desktop background, or pick a fun colour scheme, lack of this fun functionality is just silly. Even ‘starters’ want to personalise thier stuff

A quick look at the questions and answers on this forum for super users implies that they would rather have XP on their Netbooks than Windows 7 Starter. On balance, for me, Windows 7 starter is working well enough with the exception of not being allowed technically or legally to change the desktop background.

I will probably find more differences as I start to fully use the Cupboard, for now these are the immediately noticable differences.

Here we see Neverland having dinner with Matrix and I in a farmhouse style restaruant that tolerates ladies with laptops on their tables. That was

GOOD

Once you’re up and running with your new, budget, computer, what do you do next? I change the desktop background to that gorgeous picture of Matrix.

When I used the fabulous easy transfer migration wizardy thing to move my files and preferred settings from Neverland, this desktop background picture didn’t move. For a fleeting second I thought this was odd but not a big problem because its so easy to pick a picture and I do enjoy picking and changing the picture.

Can you hear it coming? Can you?

Windows 7 starter does not let you change the desktop background !!!!

BAD

Apparantly ‘Starter’ means we’ll take away the frivolous fun and your ability to personalise the desktop. The available colour schemes for the desktop are the ‘Classic’ which mean make it look like Windows 2000 and the high-contrast schemes that make it easier for people with vision defects to use the computer. I can live without personalising the colour scheme but being forced to look at the windows logo on a blue background is a bad decision. Everyone I know enjoys chaning their deskop background. At work they have to have dull corporate or business backgrounds, but on their own machines and phone’s they can make it personal, put their own picture as a Background. Even cheap phones let you change the background picture, but not windows 7 starter. That was a big suprise and a major disappointment. It’s a mean not user-focussed decision, that’s just

My first day with the cupboard got off to a spanking start. Hoorah!
Then things suddenly slipped to a chug, and
Finally I went to bed without even getting to use the cupboard. Booooo!

Here’s my story:

1. get safely online

connect to the internet

download Windows updates, reboot

download MacAfee updates, reboot

download Microsoft update, reboot

It took about 10 mintues from pulling the Cupboard from its box to going online. Great start. It took about 4 hours and 3 reboots to get all the software security updates installed. While I’m glad to have the live software security updates, 4 hours and 3 reboots seems a bit clumsy and dulls the shine of the new-computer experience that Sony manages to make really smooth.

While all the downloading and installing and rebooting was going on I gathered all the files from Neverland using the file transfer wizard. It’s really cool because it doesn’t

actually transfer, it copies

copy only files it, it does things you use like favourites and program settings.

I adore that automatic copy everything wizard! While it’s copying stuff on Neverland I can’t use Neverland for anything. This took about 2 hours. Urgh. While Cupboard was still installing and rebooting I couldn’t use the Cupboard. This meant that both my computers were unusable for for several hours. Ouch!

3.put copies on the Cupboard

Part of the transfer process. Another couple of hours waiting before I can use the Cupboard.

4. Clean-up the installed software

Getting rid of all the stuff that Sony has put on Windows for reasons that baffle me. For example, Sony have built a navigation toolbar, it behavies like the Apple Mac Navigation toolbar and is on this PC as well as the standard, dull-but-functional Windows task bar. After a quick investigation of the contents and functionality of the Sony toolbar I zap the bugger of my netbok – when the screensize is this small I dont want duplication functionality especially when it irritatingly appears and disappears.

I also have to unpin some advertising stuff, such as the free trial of the already dated Microsoft Office 2007, from the Windows task bar.

5.Backup everything. Windows and files

Sony Viao recommends that I burn a back-up disc, but the Cupboard doesn’t have a CD drive and they haven’t provided me with an external one. This little hiccup was not made clear at the purchase point – they should have told me that I might want to purchase a USB CD burner/player so that I can back-up my computer. I used the Windows back-up to back-up on an external USB Drive. This took yet another couple of hours while not using my new computer. It wouldn’t suprise me if most people just go straight online, without adequate safety and not backing up their stuff.

6. go to sleep

it was getting late, I hadn’t started this process first thing in the morning.

7. use the cupboard

After a good night’s sleep, I will be ready to start exploring and finding out what the real differences are between a cheap netbook and a prestige laptop.

The first thing on the Windows 7 starter development team’s things to do is Discover windows 7. It’s the last thing on my start-up thing to do.

Here’s what the Windows 7 development team suggest for a new user:

a guided tour (Discover Windows 7),

getting my photographs, favourites, and programme settings from my old to this computer (transfer your files)

Neverland has retired. Hardware failure due to wear and tear. She will be donating her organs to my home network. Screwdrivers at the ready!

Please welcome Neverland’s replacement, Cupboard. Neverland was a top of the range Sony Viao TT with fab processor, delicious styling, lightweight gorgeousness. She was yummy. Cupboard is a cheap Windows 7 starter Netbook, smaller and heavier than neverland. Another Sony Viao, I’m a bit of a brand loyalist. Lets hope the cheaper hardware is more robust.

Differences I noticed before purchasing when I tried the Netbook in the Sony store:

More pushy – The key-push experience needs slightly more push, the keypad is not as sesnisitve. A subtle quality thing. More pressure is also needed on the ‘mouse’ keys.

Small but chunky– despite being smaller than the Viaio TT the Viao netbook is heavier and thicker.